The Evangelical Prophets Anointing Trump

The Evangelical Prophets Anointing Trump

Refuse Fascism Episode 181

Sun, Dec 10, 2023 4:07PM • 45:48

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 00:00

And one of the interesting things about Mike Johnson is he seems to intersect with and hang out with and connect with all of these major institutions of the religious right — groups that many people would call fringe. They’ve become much more mobilized and connected, much more mainstream in the Trump era — people that most news readers have never heard of, but who are very, very extreme figures, who were very central to January 6. January 6 was fueled by these sorts of ideas of prophecy, these ideas of destiny of the United States, these ideas of Christians maintaining and holding power. I think what we have is a very rapidly changing landscape of the religious right today that very mobilized that is extremely angry, that sees itself entering into an apocalyptic scenario going into 2024.

Sam Goldman 01:07

Welcome to Episode 181 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. In today’s episode, we’re sharing an interview with Dr. Matthew D. Taylor, Senior Scholar, Protestant Scholar at the Institute for Islamic Christian Jewish Studies, ICJS, to discuss House Speaker Mike Johnson and the New Apostolic reformation movement.

But first thanks to everyone who goes the extra step and rates and reviews the show on Apple podcasts, shares and comments on social media or YouTube. It helps us reach more listeners and we read every one. After listening to today’s show, take a sec to help grow this community by writing a review and dropping five stars on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Subscribe/follow so you never miss an episode. And of course, continue all that sharing and commenting on social media. Thanks as well to all those who support this show over at Patreon. Become a patron for as little as $2 a month to support this show, visit Patreon.com/RefuseFascism.

I want to take a moment to follow up on last week’s episode in which I discussed with Susan Neiman the censorship, repression, and blacklisting of critics of Israel’s war on Gaza. This past Tuesday, December 5, the House of Representatives passed Resolution 894. It is absolutely true as the resolution states that there is a “drastic rise of anti semitism in the United States and around the world.”

We know that white supremacist anti Semites are indeed members of this very House of Representatives. And it is essential that such bigotry actually be fought. One might start by condemning and removing from office, for instance, members of the House who have joined forces with Nick Fuentes, Jonathan Hagee, and other influential anti semites. Instead, however, this measure makes the dangerous conflation of “anti Zionism is anti semitism,” further fostering the ominous notion that criticism of Israel is always synonymous with bigotry against Jews. It serves only one purpose: to muzzle dissent, to silence the cries to let Gaza live as the people of Gaza are slaughtered daily.

As Will Bunch put it in a tweet: “The fight against the very real scourge of anti semitism is being hijacked by bad actors who want a new McCarthyism to repress any type of free speech they don’t like. We need the courage to stop this.”

Now, we need to talk briefly about a couple more things as they relate to the accelerating fascist threat. Before we get into my interview with Matthew, as many more mainstream publications and intellectuals are at long last devoting themselves to raising the alarm over Trump’s potential return to power, exposing in depth what a Trump’s second term would bring, what undergirds almost all of this alarm is an extraordinary intellectual effort supported by centuries of mythmaking over American “democracy” to contain any concern, and certainly any action, to Tuesday, November 5 2024.

As the new depths are exposed every week in the GOP’s plans for re seizing power and never letting go, and as the Supreme Court, folks like Mike Johnson, and fascist Governors and legislators across the country wreak havoc on the administrative state on the rights of women and girls and LGBTQ+ people and people of color and immigrants, as their crazy ideas like purging tens of thousands of government workers and filling the vacancies that they see useful with a pre screened list of cool loyalists, all hope, if any, is pointed towards the voting booth.

But wait just a second, that means that the Democratic Party and “the voters” are the only chance we have. Let’s take a second look at each of these separately. First, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party and the liberal establishment — the guardrails of American democracy — they have power right now. They have the power of state in the most powerful, and to be honest, most brutal empire this world has ever seen. Just look at the brutality they are helping to unleash in Gaza right now.

Or spin the globe and google what violence they have brought down on almost any country on this planet at some point in the last 200 years. If their institutions like the Department of Justice have not made a dent in stopping the fascist movement, it cannot be for lack of capacity, but can only be a lack of will. It may just be that their priority and reason for being is the stability and growth of the American empire, not justice, and those interests are ultimately shared by the fascists. Now, for “the voters”, the fascists have made clear that they will reject any election they lose, and they have spent decades gutting and dismantling the right to vote.

Mike Johnson, the topic of today’s interview, and Donald Trump have been explicit that they are waging a war on democracy. They send their followers to the polls, for sure, but they also send them out to transform every sphere of society every day of the year. In face of this, “the voters” can at best be an obstacle for the fascist movement to overcome. But if we break from this logic and break this mental shackle of opposition to fascism, centering solely around the voting booths, if we see, “voters” together with the rest of the millions of people in this country, who don’t want a fascist future — millions who are horrified by that prospect — and compel people into action to stop that right now to discuss strategize, debate, struggle over what kind of future we do want, then we stand a chance to create a future where none of our fundamental rights can be reduced or put up for a vote.

We couldn’t run an episode covering what I refer to as Christian fascism, and my guest might refer to as Christian nationalism or extremism without talking about Kate Cox. The Supreme Court is doubling down on the torture, cruelty and, yes, possible death, they wish to inflict on women. In order to enforce our subordination, Kate, a 31 year old Dallas woman, mother of two had been granted a temporary restraining order from a lower court on Thursday, so that her doctor would be able to terminate her pregnancy in which her fetus has a fatal diagnosis.

But now this is paused as the Texas Supreme Court considers a petition from Attorney General Ken Paxton to stop this procedure. Paxton has threatened three Houston hospitals with legal consequences if they help Kate access an abortion. These Christian fascists that fill the judiciary are willing to literally kill a woman by forcing her to carry a non viable and dangerous pregnancy, rather than to let her have agency to live. While our heart breaks for Kate and her family, and we are rooting for her to get the care she needs however she can, this is not stopping with Kate, or with Texas. It’s not stopping until we stop them. We need abortion on demand and without apology nationwide. With that, here’s my conversation with Dr. Matthew D. Taylor.

It’s December 10, 2023. The Christian fascist Republicans dominate and control the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives. They dominate numerous state governments across the country right now, creating a living nightmare for millions of women, girls and LGBTQ folks. And they’re powerfully positioned within the federal judiciary, the military and other institutions. They are backed by a social base that is blindly obedient and heavily armed.

For over a month now, the second most powerful position in the federal government, the second in line for the presidency has been held by an outright Christian theocrat, Mike Johnson. As Marcy Hamilton for The Guardian has written, “Johnson is in fact a believer in scriptural originalism, the view that the Bible is the truth and the sole legitimate source for public policy.” Shortly after Mike Johnson was installed as the Speaker of the House, we ran an interview with Sarah Posner to discuss what Johnson has done, and been part of, as intellectual architect of efforts to overturn the election and his role with the Alliance Defending Freedom.

We are returning to this topic of MAGA Mike Johnson, the significance and danger captured in his assent, and what it signals about the role and influence of Christian nationalism to sound the alarm on the very real threat of the theocracy. To do that, I am happy to welcome onto the show, Dr. Matthew D. Taylor,. He’s a senior scholar and the Protestant Scholar at ICIJS, where he specializes in Muslim-Christian dialogue Evangelical and Pentecostal movements, religious politics in the U.S., and American Islam. He has written for both Bulwark and Rolling Stone about Mike Johnson’s deep ties to the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement that helped fuel the January 6th insurrection.

On a podcast series, Charismatic Revival Theory, the New Apostolic Reformation, part of Straight White Americans Jesus podcast, Dr. Taylor, it takes on the history of this movement, their leaders and ideologies that fueled the siege on the Capitol, and he has a forthcoming book on this topic, as well titled: ‘The Violent Take it by Force, the Christian movement that is sabotaging our democracy’. It’s being published by Broadleaf, with an anticipated September 2024 release. Welcome, Matthew. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 11:22

Well, thank you for having me.

Sam Goldman 11:23

I guess let’s start with a really big simple question. [laughs] [MT: Yes] In your Bulwark article, titled Mike Johnson, the bullied extremist, you wrote, “so which is he? An anti-democratic politician and insurrectionist, or a mild mannered Christian? Part of the problem is that we have to come to imagine that a person cannot be both at the same time, Mike Johnson shows that you can.” So who is Mike Johnson? There have been others that study Christian nationalism that have referred to him as like a white Christian nationalist, and a tailored suit. There’s all these Washington Post and other mainstream media places talking about him as this mild mannered family man. Who is he?

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 12:06

Part of the point that I’m trying to get out in that Bulwark article is that — and this flows out of Christian privilege in the United States — we have this imagination that says, “Good people can’t be Christian nationalists, or good Christians can’t be Christian nationalists, or people that you might meet at church that you might meet at the grocery store and say, Hey, that was a nice person… well, that person couldn’t possibly support the overthrow of democracy.”

As far as I can tell, Mike Johnson is a very mild mannered fellow. He seems to have come up in fairly conventional Christian Southern Baptist circles. He comes across as mild mannered. He seems articulate and clever, a good lawyer. Seemingly the kind of person that you might be okay having a cup of coffee with. And yet he holds very extreme beliefs. Again, because of Christian privilege in the United States, to differentiate what are extreme forms of Christianity from what are non extreme forms of Christianity, and part of what I’m trying to do through my series, charismatic revival theory and also through my forthcoming book is to highlight exactly what Christian radicalization in the United States looks like, and going deep in a particular form of Christian nationalism.

So, we talk a lot about Christian nationalism. It’s often treated as though, or white Christian nationalism, some people prefer, and it’s often treated as though that’s this big monolithic project; there’s big monolithic movement that all these people are marching in lockstep, and they all are in agreement. The reality is, Christian nationalism is more of a tendency. It’s a style of relating Christianity and the American project or American identity. It has a lot of different forms, a lot of different styles. One of the interesting things about Mike Johnson is he’s almost a “Where’s Waldo” of the religious right, if you look at the history of where he’s been. He seems to intersect with and hang out with and connect with all of these major institutions of the religious right.

That also means that he’s interacting with groups that, many people would call fringe. They become much more immobilized and connected, much more mainstream in the Trump era. People that most news readers have never heard of, but who are very, very extreme figures, who were very central to January 6th. Two months ago, I’d never heard of Mike Johnson, right. He’s very much been a figure has been in the background. When you actually dig into the people that he knows, the places that he hangs out, the groups that he convenes and helps participate in, you realize: Wow, this guy really has some very deep connections to some very dangerous people.

Sam Goldman 14:31

That was really, really helpful. Especially when you’re talking about his connections to all these different people and him being a common thread, and what those implications are that. There is a nod, almost, to Trump in a certain way, though, he’s not a religious figure in the same way that that Johnson is, but the ability to unite so many different various strands that oftentimes would be deeply opposed to each other, I think is is worth considering as well.

You wrote a piece that I thought was really provocative and thoughtful and just full of, for someone like me who’s not a religious scholar, like highly accessible. You wrote for the Rolling Stone with Bradley Onishi, shortly after Johnson was installed about the flag that flies outside Johnson’s office. This white flag with this evergreen tree with the words emblazoned “AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN,” and you use that as a means to help us understand the movement that he rolls with, even if he’s not directly theologically part of. So I wanted to explore a little bit with you, the significance of this flag, what it is, and what that helps us understand.

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 15:47

Let me back up a little bit and talk about the movement that has really embraced this flag, because that’s really important context and situate what Johnson’s embrace of it means. So back in the 1990s, in the area that we call the independent, charismatic sector of Christianity, which most people have never heard of — many Christians have never heard of this sector, or wouldn’t think about it in these terms. So this is… it’s similar to Pentecostalism, people will talk about Pentecostalism, but Pentecostalism is a denominational movement. So, people belong to a Pentecostal denomination.

The Independent charismatic sector is…it’s kind of like the country cousins of Pentecostalism, but it’s non-denominational. So, there’s virtually zero regulation. In this arena there’s just mega churches and non-denominational churches and non-denominational ministries and charismatic media. And, by “charismatic,” we’re talking about the types of Christians who believe deeply in supernatural manifestations. The term “charismatic” derives from this term in the New Testament, ‘charismata’, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the graces of God.

But, for charismatics — and this term has been in use for a little over a hundred years now — they really are people who want to get back to the original Christianity, this supernaturally inflected and infused Christianity with prophets and apostles. So, in the 1990s, a group of these folks gather around a particular seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. Wagner helps to champion this term, the “New Apostolic Reformation.” The idea is that in this kind of non-denominational landscape, God is anointing and empowering new apostles and prophets.

If you know anything about the New Testament, the apostles are the paradigmatic leaders of the early Christian church, these kind of supernaturally miracle working disciples of Jesus, and the prophets are people who hear directly from God and offer those messages to the church. Most Christians today probably would say that those were part of Christianity at one point, and have now passed away. But Wagner in his circles are saying: No, there’s a new movement of these apostles. God is empowering new apostles and prophets. This group becomes very radicalized. It’s a large group. It’s in the hundreds of people who join these networks, the Peter Wagner forms in the early 2000s.

Over time, hundreds of these people attach themselves, start calling themselves apostles and prophets, they become very, very politically radicalized as well. They become united around this idea that the demons have taken over the world, in essence; that after Adam and Eve, Satan now has power over the world. And Satan has set up all these hierarchies of demons. They would call them territorial spirits, or powers and principalities is the phrase they sometimes use from the book of Ephesians. It’s a worldview that says: There are powerful demons and hierarchies of demons that control literal, physical territory, and that these apostles and prophets are generals of spiritual warfare, who can organize Christians to do battle spiritually against these hierarchies of demons.

Up until maybe 10, 15 years ago, this was seen as a very, very fringe idea in Christianity. But over time, these people get very animated around these things, and they become very politicized, and start saying: “No, the Democratic Party is actually controlled by demons. Anyone who is in support of abortion is empowering demons.” And so they get very militant rhetoric, but centered around these ideas of spiritual warfare. And part of what they do is they create campaigns of spiritual warfare, organizing Christians to pray, to show up and physically in spaces, and to do battle against these demons.

One of the leaders who Wagner mentors is a guy named Dutch Sheets. Dutch Sheets was a pastor for a long time, identifies as both an apostle and a prophet. In 2013, he was presiding over a ceremony and is given this flag. It’s a white flag. It’s got a green pine tree in the center of it. And the phrase of the top, as you said, “AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN.” It’s actually a revolutionary war flag. The phrase “an appeal to heaven” comes from the philosopher John Locke, from one of his treatises. This flag was commissioned by George Washington to fly over the Massachusetts Navy. You’ll still sometimes see it in Revolutionary War reenactments or commemorations. It’s kind of lived in relative obscurity in American life. It’s kind of a symbol from Americana that some people would recognize.

But, it was given to Dutch Sheets in 2013, and he believes that he has this moment where God speaks to him and says: This is the sign of a great spiritual warfare campaign to save America, to restore the prophetic destiny of America. And so Dutch Sheets, he writes a book about the Appeal to Heaven flag, titled An Appeal to Heaven. He starts spreading this. Dutch Sheets is very, very popular in this world. He’s a very important celebrity in this independent charismatic world. And then all of his NAR friends all start picking this up.

So you start seeing it proliferating, starting around 2015 is where it really takes off, that’s when his book comes out. It becomes very attached to Republican politics, to Christian nationalism. They’ve managed to have this flag fly over several state capitals. Many Republican lawmakers will have this flag outside their office, or have in the background. Zoom calls, when they’re doing kind of video calls. So, it’s become this kind of coded symbol that both has this element of American history, but then also has this very strong spiritual warfare and prophecy style Christian nationalism dimension to it as well.

Part of what Brad Ornishi and I wrote about in Rolling Stone — and this surfaced through some users on Twitter, and then we were able to kind of verify, and even inquire with Mike Johnson’s office about this — Mike Johnson flies an Appeal to Heaven flag outside of his office. He has been doing this, evidently, for years. And nobody has written about it until he became Speaker. And he continues to fly this flag outside of his office. This is where we got involved and started asking some questions, because it was it was very suspicious.

Sam Goldman 21:21

Just to push that further, what does it signal that he is flying that flag? He’s not part of that movement, but what is he trying to say here? Or what should we understand is being said?

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 21:32

Part of what we get into in the Rolling Stone piece, and also I get into this, some in my Bulwark article, is what you realize when you dig into Mike Johnson a little bit, as I said, he’s Southern Baptist, as far as I know, not charismatic and his own spirituality, but he hangs out with a lot of people who are. This is a changing dynamic that we’re seeing in right wing, far right, religious politics in the United States; that over time, as has happened, in large part because of the Trump presidency, these independent charismatics are some of the people who really grabbed hold of Trump early on in 2016 campaign, they were some of the first Christians to meet with Trump, some of the first Christian leaders to endorse Trump. As they’ve kind of moved from the margins into the center of religious right politics — I’ve sometimes talked about this as the “charismaticization” of right wing politics. More and more you see charismatic spirituality, charismatic leaders, becoming central figures in the religious right in a way that they certainly were not in the 1980s, 1990s even early 2000s.

Mike Johnson has a number of associates who are very deep in this movement. One of them is an apostle in Louisiana, in his district, named Timothy Carscadden. Carscadden is a mentee of Dutch Sheets, hangs out with Dutch Sheets quite a bit, speaks at the same conferences as Dutch Sheets, goes to Dutch Sheets’ events. Timothy Carscadden is very much a proponent of this Appeal to Heaven flag, and Mike Johnson hangs out at Timothy Carscadden’s church — has invited Timothy Carscadden to come and spend time in Washington D.C. with Mike Johnson. It’s not as though he happens to have this flag, but there’s no connection to this NAR thing. No, he is close friends with people who are in this movement.

Another key NAR leader is a guy named Jim Garlow. He’s a pastor who came out of southern California and is now an activist in Washington D.C. Jim Garlow is also very much a proponent of a lot of the Seven Mountains ideas or the NAR ideas. They sometimes talk about the Seven Mountain Mandate as a way of this kind of model or schema for taking over society an idea that comes out of the NAR. Jim Garlow is a big proponent of this idea. Jim Garlow runs prayer and spiritual warfare calls that Mike Johnson calls into regularly, and kind of gives congressional updates and talks about his own understanding of spiritual warfare.

So, again, the guy is Southern Baptist, but he’s hanging out with a lot of these very extremist kind of charismatic leaders. Through Rolling Stone, we actually inquired with Johnson’s office about, well, why does he fly this flag? What does it mean to him? He wouldn’t really give us an answer about what it means to him other than to say he appreciates American history, which is a very coy dodge, you find with a lot of these politicians who fly the Appeal to Heaven flag, they’ll say: Oh, it’s just a piece of Americana. I just happen to love this flag. 12 years ago, nobody was flying this flag, and nobody was talking about it before Dutch Sheets picks it up and turns it into this meme of Christian nationalism.

But one of the other things that Mike Johnson’s office spokesperson confirmed is that he had received this flag as a gift from a pastor, and that Pastor happens to be the associate pastor from Jim Garlow’s church. This is not like three orders of removal. He received this flag from a guy who’s connected to the New Apostolic Reformation. The flag was coined by Dutch Sheets, a key leader in the New Apostolic Reformation. Mike Johnson is friends with a number of people in the New Apostolic Reformation, and joins in their different events, and he’s flying this flag outside of his office. I don’t know precisely what it means to him.

I try very hard not to get deep into the way that politicians actually understand theology or religion. For politicians, they’ve got all these cross cutting incentives. They’re trying to appeal to a wide range of people, they have to get reelected, they have to build constituents, they have to do fundraising. They may have their own personal spirituality as well, but all of that is a very muddled picture. It’s very hard to figure out exactly what he believes or what is his sincere understanding of Christianity. They’re incentivized to send certain signals.

My concern is more what signal is Mike Johnson sending by having this flag outside of his office? Who is he trying to cozy up to? What is he trying to say to those people? And I’ll just note this: We’re recording this on the 9th, just a few days ago, there was a big gathering in Washington D.C., at the Evangelical Museum of the Bible, which has become a real hub [SG I was gonna bring that up, yeah.] and at this gathering of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which is a group that is fairly new — the National Association of Christian Lawmakers is run by a guy named Jason Rapert, who is also a disciple of Dutch Sheets.

Jason Rapert has been one of the foremost proponents of putting this Appeal to Heaven flag into those places. In fact, he helped to get it flying over the Arkansas State Capitol in 2015. Jason Rapert is now running this organization that gathers Christian lawmakers everywhere from kind of the local level all the way up to the national level of Christian lawmakers. I’m generally fairly cautious about how I apply this label, but it’s very hard to understand the National Association of Christian Lawmakers other than to just call it a Christian nationalist organization. They’re very overt in how they talk about Christians dominating society, Christians having the power in society.

Mike Johnson was the featured keynote speaker at this gathering in Washington D.C. Of all these people who love flying their Appeal to Heaven flags, all these people who are inspired by Dutch Sheets. And he didn’t think that the recording was public, and he even mentions that in his comments in his speech, but it was, it was it was streaming live, and he talks about there that — he compares himself overtly to Moses. He says that God pushed him forward into this position of responsibility and power, that God is parting the Red Sea in America.

The level of ego, the level of religious narcissism, the level of the sense of power that you can see in the way that Mike Johnson speaks, evidently thinking he’s behind closed doors with these Christian lawmakers, and the sense that he has this destiny that God has put on his life. All of those are things that deeply worry me, especially in the aftermath of January 6. Because January 6 was fueled by these sorts of ideas of prophecy, these ideas of destiny of the United States, these ideas of Christians maintaining and holding power. I

f you go back to January 6, go and look at the imagery from that day, go and look at the photos and the videos. You see these Appeal to Heaven flags everywhere. Dutch Sheets was incredibly involved. He did not show up that day himself. He was leading a prayer call with 4,000 Spiritual warriors during the Capitol riot. He called into the Capitol riot by speakerphone because some of his friends were there leading spiritual warfare on the ground. Dutch Sheets was one of the most effective mobilizers of Christians to show up on January 6. He was driving them there through his podcast and his media visits. Those Appeal to Heaven flags are everywhere on January 6th. And the people are explicitly saying: I brought this flag because I’m part of this movement that Dutch Sheets is leading and I believe in these prophecies.

That’s who Mike Johnson is associating himself with. Dutch Sheets, he’s not disavowing Jason Rapert, he intentionally goes and spends time with them and hangs out with him and goes on Jim Garlow’s shows. It’s this nexus of connections to people who are very involved in January 6th, the Christians who are very involved in mobilizing people for that, that really does worry me.

Sam Goldman 28:37

You basically asked and answered [both laugh] my next question beautifully, but I do want to just give you an opportunity to say anything more about this. I know that it’s the topic of your book in many ways. Is there anything else in terms of the pivotal role that NAR in particular, but others in association, played in January 6th, that people need to understand, that has not, I’ll be honest, been really covered by mainstream media, that you think that people need to grasp?

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 29:06

The challenge of talking about the NAR, talking about the independent charismatic world, is that this is a world without a lot of conspicuous institutions, right. You don’t have denominations, you don’t have official statements of faith, you don’t have these major overarching kind of bodies. It’s a very diffuse world. It’s a world that is built around relationships among these leaders. And that’s part of what the NAR, what Peter Wagner and his fellows who are building this New Apostolic Reformation idea were trying to do, was build an infrastructure that was loose enough that all these people could feel like they’re still independent and independent operators and they’ve got their own ministries and they’re doing their own things, but it’s connected enough and relational enough that all these people will work together in coalition.

This is what you see today in the independent charismatic world, where there’s hundreds of these celebrity preachers, celebrity messianic rabbis, celebrity prophets, celebrity apostles, celebrity worship leaders who inhabit this kind of echelon of leadership in the independent, charismatic world, who are celebrities in their little niche of Christianity in the United States. That world, that celebrity culture of the independent charismatic is so Trumpy. You wouldn’t believe it. Everyone kind of assumes evangelicals are Trumpy. Everyone just kind of assumes that evangelicals are in lockstep with Donald Trump.

But, if you look at the history, actually, there were real outposts of resistance to Donald Trump all throughout evangelicalism. The statistic that always gets quoted as 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. Well, a) there are a lot of non-white evangelicals, so when we talk about evangelicalism as a broader movement, there are a lot of people who are not white, who did not vote for Trump. But also, even within white evangelicalism, there were like 20%, and many of these were evangelical elites who were resisting Trump at least early on, and wanted to vote for other people, who saw him as a threat to their understanding of evangelicalism.

In the independent charismatic world, you do not find those pockets of resistance. Instead, what you see is people really marching in lockstep with Donald Trump, embracing Donald Trump. Hundreds of charismatic prophets prophesied that Donald Trump was going to win the 2020 election, hundreds. And there were no voices, there were no prophets who are coming forward and saying: “Hey, I’ve got an outlying prophecy and he’s not gonna win.” It was this mind meld in that world. These folks had bandied around Trump.

Many of the people who were evangelical advisors to Donald Trump were these independent charismatic leaders, some of them apostles, some prophets, megachurch pastors, some televangelists. This became an entire culture that was in many ways, the vanguard of Christian Trumpism. So when Trump is declared the loser of the 2020 election, when Joe Biden has declared the winner, as Trump refuses to concede, you have these prophets who all say: Well, you know, God can still intervene, God can still turn this election to Donald Trump. And this was a spirituality that fueled January 6, was that people believe that God was going to miraculously intervene. These Christians believed that God was going to miraculously intervene; if they showed up, if they did spiritual warfare, if they prayed hard enough, if they sang their worship music loud enough, then God would defeat the demons that had stolen the election from Donald Trump, and God was going to reinstall Donald Trump.

As one of the NAR apostles put it on January 5, on the eve of the insurrection: “We are going to rule and reign through Donald Trump under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” This was his declaration on January 5 in Washington D.C., on the eve of the insurrection. “We conservative Christians, we charismatic apostles and prophets are going to rule and reign through Donald Trump under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” That was the agenda for these Christians on January 6.

If you look at the manifestations of Christianity that you see in the crowd, yes, they are Christian, yes, they are Christian nationalist, but they are very much driven by this charismatic spirituality. Wagner had an inner circle of about 30 mentees and disciples that see Peter Wagner as their spiritual father. From that group, five show up in on January 6. Another seven or eight from that group are also helping to mobilize people for January 6. You’ve got this huge leadership cohort that is pushing people towards January 6, saying, God needs you to be there. You need to do spiritual warfare, you need to be on site, you need to be boots on the ground — they love their military language — you need to be boots on the ground, praying and doing warfare so that Donald Trump is restored to office.

That is kind of the way that you can make sense of all of these, what seemed like chaotic and weird expressions of Christianity on January 6th. There was a lot of chaos, there’s a lot of weirdness, but the through line through it all was these independent charismatic celebrities. Many people have argued: Well, it was not official evangelical institutions that showed up on January 6th. To which, I would counter, all these folks that I’m talking about are evangelical.

I have tracked more than 50, independent charismatic leaders, some of them local pastors, some of them global celebrities in the independent, charismatic world who are there in D.C. on January 6th. Now, not very many of them went into the Capitol, because again, they believe that their task that day was spiritual violence, not physical violence, but that language of spiritual violence, ramped up and ramped up and ramped, up and inspired many people who did commit physical violence.

Sam Goldman 29:54

I really appreciate that connection at that end, between how this spiritual battle, which, for some, becomes an actual battle. I’m not talking about what their pastors’ intentions are, that is, honestly, besides the point. What matters is what people do, in a certain sense. And in these instances, I’m just thinking about going forward this year, especially as the fall approaches. How do you see this movement responding? And what should we be paying attention to, in terms of the danger posed in this moment? Because it seems to me as you know, an outsider, that despite people’s hopes and wishes, this movement hasn’t diminished or weakened, but we could say it’s become more organized or strengthened, nd I just want your thoughts on that.

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 35:02

I would definitely argue that since January 6, this movement has strengthened. Part of what happened was the New Apostolic Reformation was, in some ways, a legacy movement within this independent, charismatic world. Peter Wagner was organizing the stuff. He started around 1998, 1999 and then retired in 2010, so a lot of these leaders who were part of the New Apostolic Reformation, people like Dutch Sheets, they were hanging around Wagner 10, 15, 20 years ago. Like I said, I think they really became quite radicalized in that process — have a very radical vision of American politics and the role of Christianity and prophecy in American politics.

But there’s this whole crop of other independent charismatic leaders, as I said, there’s thousands of these people who are identifying as apostles, identifying as prophets, who are younger, who are entrepreneurial — this is a very entrepreneurial culture — in some ways, as the New Apostolic Reformation broke the seal for these folks into the religious right. As they opened the door for these independent charismatic celebrities to come and be part of the Religious Right, in a way that they never could before Trump, because they were always seen as fringy and marginal and the James Dobsons and the Jerry Falwells laughed them out of the room. It was like: Oh, those crazy charismatic, those crazy Pentecostals, we don’t want anything to do with those folks, we’re the respectable establishment religious right. Well, now you’ve had these tectonic shifts that have occurred.

Again, because these folks got in at the ground level with Trump and became his most ardent supporters, they became the leaders of the religious right in a new way. And you’re starting to see these charismatic practices get integrated more and more into the religion, where you’ll have political rallies, just a Republican political rally, and you’ll have a worship band, get up and lead charismatic Christian worship music at a political rally. And you’re like, well, but isn’t this a secular party? Well, no, it isn’t anymore. It has become part of the lingua franca of how this religious right Republican interface gets worked out, is often through this charismatic spirituality and charismatic leaders.

That new cohort of people who are breaking through are extremely radical in the way that they think about these things. And you see them gathering in places like this Reawaken America tour, which is led by Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who himself is Catholic. He’s Irish Catholic. He’s not tied into these charismatic networks in any organic way, but he has seen the power of these folks, and so he’s gathering them, and he’s radicalizing them even further. And he’s cross pollinating them with QAnon and with COVID denialism, with all these other conspiracy theories. You see these echelons of these independent charismatic pastors — people that when you try to look at, oh, where are they from? It’s some obscure pastor from some obscure church in nowhere.

And yet, now they’re suddenly on the stage at Reawaken America Tour, talking about their prophecies, and putting forward these very extreme ideas. I think what we have is a very rapidly changing landscape of the religious right today that is very mobilized, that is extremely angry, that sees itself entering into an apocalyptic scenario going into 2024. Just as they use very apocalyptic language in 2016, and in 2020, and now there’s a playbook for how all of this is supposed to play out.

It involves organizing massive campaigns, as I said, of spiritual warfare — you will see these Appeal to Heaven flags proliferating. They understand American politics to be an arena of spiritual warfare, and they believe that they are fighting against demons who have taken over the United States, taken over the Democratic Party, taken over even some of the Republicans who are not loyal to Trump, and they must eradicate those demons; they have to fight in the public arena of American life, to push out these demonic powers. You are going to see a lot of rallies, you’re gonna see a lot of organizing, you’re gonna see a lot of prophecies.

Because in 2020, you had all these prophecies about Trump having two terms that obviously were not fulfilled, as Donald Trump consolidates the Republican primary and, God help us, I think he’s gonna win the Republican primary — it does not look like anyone’s going to give him a real run for his money — those prophecies are all going to start resurfacing and it’s going to be more and more energy, more and more of this language of Donald Trump being anointed, Donald Trump being chosen by God, Donald Trump having this special anointing. They’ll sometimes talk about the Cyrus anointing. If you know your Hebrew Bible, right, Cyrus is the pagan emperor, the Persian emperor who sends the Jewish leaders back from exile in Babylon to go and rebuild Jerusalem.

So, these prophecies, beginning even in 2015, about Donald Trump being a Cyrus is going to deliver conservative Christians back from exile. All of that is going to resurface and there’s gonna be a building fervor of spirituality around Donald Trump. My real worry, going into 2024 is not just about what happens in the election, but it’s about what happens after the election, because whoever is declared the winner of the 2024 election, I don’t see a scenario in which that is not a contested result. If Donald Trump is declared the winner, you’re going to have a lot of Democrats mobilizing and saying: There were all these shenanigans with voter rolls and with electors, and there’s all these shenanigans.

Is Trump even qualified to hold office? Isn’t the 14th amendment? Can we stop him? There’s gonna be the season of great tension. And if Joe Biden, who looks like will win the Democratic primary, if he wins the election, then can you imagine a scenario in which Donald Trump concedes an election? Can you imagine a scenario in which he does not try to fight? I mean, Donald Trump was willing to push things to the brink on January 6th because he wanted to stay in the White House for four more years.

Right now, what is on the line for Donald Trump is that he could be in prison. What is he willing to do to stay out of prison? What is he willing to do to consolidate power? If he’s surrounded by these spiritual advisors, and by these spiritual propagandists who are using literal language of demonization of their enemies in order to promote the cause of Donald Trump, how crazy can we get in that season between November 2024 and January 2025?

We’re looking at the real possibility — and I don’t say this lightly and I, I would be thrilled to be wrong on all of this, I would love to be wrong, we’re looking at the real possibility — of a great deal of Christianity inflected political violence that emerges in this contestation, and in this belief that this is a spiritual war, a cosmic war over the destiny of America. This is what happens when you have this language of spiritual warfare that gets infused into our politics, it turns everything into this zero sum grudge match for the eternal destiny of America as opposed to who’s going to be in the White House for the next four years?

And suddenly, all these policy disputes and debates become amped up to the nth degree. So that’s my worry about 2024. I think we’re gonna see that the religious right has an incredible ground game. They are very, very good at mobilizing their voters, at energizing their people. They are really getting ready for that. They’ve got all the infrastructure for it. There’s almost not a limit on the kind of chaos that can sow in American culture.

Sam Goldman 42:03

I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us your expertise on this community, and your perspective on Mike Johnson and the danger he poses. I wanted to make sure to give you the space to tell people where to go, what to look at if they want to connect more with you and your work.

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 42:26

I’m on Twitter, I’m on Bluesky, I’m on Threads, I’m on Substack, just search for Matthew D. Taylor, you’ll probably find one of those accounts. I’m also on the podcast series that I did with Bradley Onisni. If you just Google charismatic revival theory. My book is called ‘The Violent Take It by Force’, which is actually a biblical quotation, it’s a quote from Jesus that these folks use quite a bit. That will be available for preorder in January, and the book will come out in September of 2024. And if you preorder it, I think you can get about four to six weeks early, so go ahead and preorder it.

Sam Goldman 42:57

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Dr. Matthew D. Taylor 42:58

Thank you.

Sam Goldman 42:59

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. Got thoughts or questions off this episode? We want to hear ’em. Ideas for topics or guests? Yes, please. Send them to us. In particular, we’re getting ready for a 2023 roundup show and we want to hear what episodes you found most informative, meaningful, and inspiring. Reach me at the site previously known as Twitter @SamBGoldman, drop me a line at [email protected]. Find us on Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, I’m probably missing something, @RefuseFascism.org, or leave a voicemail — see the show notes for the button.

If you want to support the show, it’s simple. Rate and review on Apple podcasts or your listening platform of choice. And of course, follow/subscribe, so you never miss an episode. You can also literally put it on your forehead with our Refuse Fascism beanie. Make a gift of $35 or more to Refuse Fascism this month, December, and you’ll get two, one for yourself and one to give a loved one. As long as you provide a shipping address. Go to RefuseFascism.org and hit the Donate button. Become a patron to support our pod and content creation to help people understand and act to stop the fascist threat. In case it’s not obvious, we have no sponsors, we count on you. Whether you can give $2 a month or $20 a month, it all makes a difference in producing and promoting this independent all volunteer weekly show. Give today at patreon.com/RefuseFascism.org or by visiting RefuseFascism.org.org and hitting that donate button. Just select recurring donation monthly or weekly if you want.

Shout out to our new production-level patrons sustainers Nancy, Dale A. and Bruce M. for your support. We couldn’t do this without you. And thanks of course to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne and Mark Tinkleman for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each show, so be sure to visit, RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. Until next Sunday, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.